Empower works with teen mentors to teach ‘God’s plan’

By:Jill Browder / guest blogger | June 9, 2013

What can be done to help kids and communities who face chronic poverty, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases? Our answer is to Empower Nicaragua! This is a new program started by a local physician from León and two unsuspecting women from Atlanta, Georgia. The difference between Empower and many other charitable initiatives in Nicaragua is that this one “empowers” teenagers to make changes in their communities by educating their peers.

The idea for Empower was initiated by Dr. Alonso Medina from the neighborhood of Rubén Dario, a barrio outside of León, where his patient load is close to 8,000. Robin and I were visiting with my church mission in 2011 when Dr. Medina told us that the problem of teen pregnancies and STDs were of concern to him. He wanted to figure out a way to educate young people on these issues in a systematic and long-term manner—not a spot mission, but something sustainable.

As God would have it, Robin and I were inspired writers working on another project in our spare time. We enthusiastically switched gears and devoted all our free time to creating a curriculum that would address the issues concerning this community and others just like it.

The program is specifically designed for teenagers to teach small group sessions to their peers. The session topics include: 1) Introduction and Building Relationships: where the mentors begin to facilitate a team and accountability group that will be loyal and supportive of one another beyond the six session course; 2) Sex in the Media: which explores the myths about sexuality portrayed in the media and how it affects our own self image; 3) Self Esteem: addressing the critical importance of holding yourself in high regard in order to make healthy choices; 4) Goal Setting: information on how to set specific short and long term goals; how to take action, as well as what to avoid in order to meet those goals; 5) Consequences of Sex: exploring the most common STDs and long term effects of unplanned pregnancy outside of marriage; and ends with 6) God’s Plan for Marriage and Sexuality. After teaching these five sessions, the students themselves have the opportunity to train to become mentors for Empower, thereby multiplying the movement.

After just one and a half years from the seed of an idea, Empower Nicaragua has grown to include not only the physician (Dr. Medina), the program coordinator (Mario Rivas), and the mentor trainer (Silvia Mercedes Matus), but also a psychologist (Sophia) and a community leader to liaise with the parents and teenagers (Parillas). Currently, Empower has 12 devoted teen mentors.

The group members have all been trained extensively on the Empower curriculum. They have also been taught how to present in front of a group, make eye contact, and command their audience. Our incredible mentor’s trainer is Silvia Mercedes Matus. As a bachelor’s student in communications, she is the ideal person for this role. She supports the mentors in their studies and guides and directs their group activities with the Empower program. Two mentors are paired to teach small groups of 4-8 young teens. They meet weekly at the home of the mentor, or at the local health clinic or church. Each new student is provided with a Bible that they can reference through the course. The mentors spend about two hours discussing the curriculum, and building relationships with one another that will extend beyond the group meetings and encourage accountability in decision making as well as encourage members to continue their education. From the group of new students, the mentors are charges with identifying natural leaders among their own groups that will be valuable, and committed to becoming a mentor for Empower.

The current mentor leaders have expressed to us how Empower has changed their lives. Lester, a 17-year old young man says that before he got involved with the Empower program he had no plans for furthering his education. He says that now he plans to go on to university to study engineering. Blanca, a 14-year old young lady, says that before Empower she had very low self esteem. She realized through the self esteem lesson, that she was valuable to God and to others. Now this is her favorite session to teach.

Cynthia and Benita say that they feel that they can really change the lives of their generation with this information. Heidi expressed that she never realized that God had a plan for her life, and that she likes the topic of self esteem and respect. Katherine struggled with family relationships. Her outlook was negative and it was obvious in the way she carried herself and interacted with everyone. About half way through the initial training course she began to open up and express herself. She sought support from the adults and began working on her relationships and her own issues. She has stayed involved in Empower as a testament to other students of the power of a support network, and believing in yourself.

Robin and I spent one-on-one time with each mentor just finding out what it was that made them willing to commit so much of their free time to this program. Every mentor has a story to tell and all seem overwhelmingly inspired by the potential change this information can have. We were most impressed with how close they had all become with one another, and how they literally beam when they talk about being a part of Empower.

Empower is a movement, not merely an educational program. We want this to be a way of life for these kids, and we want them to be empowered to change their world. There is a long way to go to make this happen, but with God all things are possible, and He has certainly not let us down in the past!

For more information on our program, our mentors, or to get involved please visit www.empowernica.org or LIKE our facebook page Empower Nicaragua.

Jill and Robin Browder are sisters and live in Atlanta with their families. They have been writing together for 3 years on a variety of projects. They have always shared a passion for missions, and have found blessings in the relationships formed in Nicaragua as a result of this project.

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The month of December marks the end of the Nicaraguan school year and the nation’s youth are left to embrace the freedom of a two-month holiday break from the stresses of daily classes, homework and tests.
The vacation commences with the excitement of the Purisima, the commotion of promocion week and the eager anticipation of the Christmas holiday. However, after the December festivities pass, the lack of academic structure begins to place Nicaraguan adolescent women into the molds of another learning environment inside the home.
For Nicaraguan girls living in more rural parts of the country, the school vacation does not open the door to pursue many recreational and personal development activities that might exist for young girls from different cultural contexts in more metropolitan Nicaraguan cities or abroad.

The month of December marks the end of the Nicaraguan school year and the nation’s youth are left to embrace the freedom of a two-month holiday break from the stresses of daily classes, homework and tests.
The vacation commences with the excitement of the Purisima, the commotion of promocion week and the eager anticipation of the Christmas holiday. However, after the December festivities pass, the lack of academic structure begins to place Nicaraguan adolescent women into the molds of another learning environment inside the home.
For Nicaraguan girls living in more rural parts of the country, the school vacation does not open the door to pursue many recreational and personal development activities that might exist for young girls from different cultural contexts in more metropolitan Nicaraguan cities or abroad.

It is great that people educated teens regarding such matters, but their main goal is to convert them to Protestanism. I can’t stand these Protestants trying to evangelize people, Nicaragua is a CATHOLIC NATION.. You guys should go to places like India or anywhere in Asia; they’re lots of other religions that can be converted. Nicaragua has been Christian Catholic for 500 years and I LIKE IT THAT WAY……

Kelvin

On the donation page I was looking for a 501(c)(3) nonprofit federal income tax number .

I see it says Empower Nicaragua Inc.

Are you a business?

Rebecca Ore

Working within the Catholic tradition would be more useful than trying to convert people to forms of religion that have been a problem in the US (fundamentalist and anti-science, full of religious cargo culting which is against Judeo-Christian real traditions — God has not shown his favor on the rich).

Not real fond of religions in general, but the various fundamentalists coming here are really problematic for a country that needs science education and less, not more, belief that people get rich because they’re favored by some deity. Real Christianity has always had cautions against trusting in riches.

Erik Jota

Every now & then on a sunday, US evangelists organize a huge event in my Managuan neighbourhood. They are extremely LOUD. I don’t mind loud (hey, I live in Nicaragua), but believe me, they are LOUD. Band rehearsels start at 07:00 (!) at an incredible high volume. The ongoing, amplified screaming, shouting and uncontrolled hysteria starts a little later in the morning, and goes on for the rest of the day. I thought it was God’s plan that we should rest on sunday. Convert what and who you want, I don’t care, but don’t SCREW UP my hamaca-day.

Maybe this is a little off-topic, but I had to get it off my chest.

Ken

Interesting to see the anti-Protestant comments.

In general I share the sentiments, and especially recoil over lesson 6: “God’s Plan for Marriage and Sexuality.” I’m quite familiar with the Bible, which most Protestants take as their source of religious authority, and can’t for the life of me understand how a plan for marriage and sexuality can be extracted from it. As best as I’ve been able to tell, the endeavor involves reversing Paul’s metaphor of Christ and the Church, reading dreamy stuff into the Song of Solomon, concocting a farfetched theology of the family from the Creation account, and fortifying it all a dozen or so stray verses. The end result though is an ideological justification for a notion of the family that didn’t arise until the late 19th century. And the endeavor is so feeble that it can be done by others who for example provide Biblical defenses of prostitution. (Google this if you don’t believe me.)

However, I say what the hell, there’s always bad mixed with the good, and people can think for themselves. A little Protestant poisoning (sorry, I couldn’t resist the alliteration) never hurt anyone, and might even make them better off.

Most importantly, I disagree that there is a value-neutral way to teach this or anything else. Sorry, even science isn’t value-neutral. It is at minimum embedded in the Enlightenment value that truth is good because it leads to social progress, but then social progress becomes a difficultly defined value too. You can also ask whether truth is always better than falsehood. More practically, the modern scientific approach to sex ed tends to assume that both health and choice are good. Well, probably they are, but how do we know? Choice is especially suspect, since it implies the isolated but autonomous individual posited by British-American political theory, and everybody knows this posit is nonsense.

Anyway, no, you can’t teach sex ed in a value-neutral way even if you hide behind science. So I say let the Protestants have their turn, the Catholics theirs, the scientists theirs, and so on. Ain’t nobody going to do this without bias, and if I oppose the Protestant bias a little more than I do other biases, I can’t single them out for special condemnation.

chris

Nicaragua is a magnet for missionaries.The poor are an easy target. Not once have i been on a flight that wasn’t packed with bible thumpers decked out in their mission shirts.Almost 100% American. Did any of you have any interest in visiting this riveting place other than during a mission? Did you stop and study its politics, culture, existing religious practices?

There are many ways to help the poor, why must there be strings attached?

Kelvin

And every one of them counted as a tourist! They sure help to keep those tourism numbers up.

Nigel

@Ken, while there are those who often argue that choice is a bad thing, I think most do agree that it is actually good. Or even “good” if you must. Health, also, is generally considered a “good” thing. So can we at least assume that choosing to be healthy is also a good thing?

Nicaragua’s sudden interest in purchasing a squadron of MiG-29 fighter jets from Russia could trigger a pointless arms race between one of the smallest and one of the largest militaries in Latin America.

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